The Castle

"It was late evening when K. arrived.  The village was deep in snow.  The Castle hill was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there.  On the wooden bridge leading from the main road to the village K. stood for a long time gazing into the illusory emptiness above him."  ~The Castle by Franz Kafka.

Intrigued after reading The Metamorphosis for a high school literature class, I purchased several works by Franz Kafka over two decades ago.  I read The Hunger Artist and The Trial with eagerness, but when I reached the end of The Trial I decided to put away Kafka for a while, and never really found my way back.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the book--I did.  Kafka has this way of crafting rich imagery and I lose myself in its beauty.  It is perhaps because I get so lost in his world that I find his stories supremely frustrating. After The Trial I felt like I had been on trial.  I wasn't sure I had the energy for a second work of fiction that so closely mirrors the realities of dealing with the labyrinth of corrupt and decadent government bureaucracy without losing my mind.  I came to see that with so much futile circular absurdity (spoiler alert!) the firing squad seems like a relief.

Add to all this the bizarre train-wreck of a year it's been, and I think I am ready to see a protagonist who dedicates his entire life to discovering the reason of things instead of calmly accepting the absurd, or worse, viciously enforcing it.  I think I can handle the rabbit trails and hypocrisy.  With the constant barrage of people chosen to lead and serve who sit in luxury telling others to do without, who tell people to stay home with a video from the big party they're having at their vacation house in another country with tons of non-relatives, who never miss a haircut, asking salons to open just for them, and parade around mask-less,  hypocrisy is becoming quite normal.

I think I'm ready to follow dear K. as he chooses not to "lead an honored and comfortable life" but to instead pursue his cause to the very end, whatever end that might be.  Perhaps he will discover, just as K. from The Trial did, that "the world will not yield to lucidity," and meet a very unhappy end.  But then, I suppose happy endings are overrated when to achieve them we sacrifice meaning.  I like a feel-good story as much as the next person, especially when times are tough.  But I think it's important when things aren't going so well, to take some time to read the challenging stuff, take a hard look at what's going on around us and really contemplate how we got where we are. 

Maybe things are go badly because people are forcing a bad system that always results in the exact same destruction.  Maybe people accept injustice because they'd rather lead a comfortable life than stand up to tyranny.  These are complicated issues without easy answers, which is why you should never believe anyone waiving an easy answer in front of you in exchange for a few freedoms.  Perhaps I am meandering a bit in my point today, but given the subject matter, I think Kafka would approve.

Shopping Info:  Dress from The-Other-Sparrows, Headband from Claire's, Mak cardi from ModCloth